You are not a Scholar, cannot read the Dead Sea Scrolls in their original languages and is it not trained in Paleography so you really don't know if Eisenman makes a good case.
Remember Eisenman claimed NO-ONE has EVER solved the HJ question.
Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus
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You are not a Scholar, cannot read the Dead Sea Scrolls in their original languages and is it not trained in Paleography so you really don't know if Eisenman makes a good case.
Remember Eisenman claimed NO-ONE has EVER solved the HJ question.
How does that make me any less qualified than you?
At least I can construct sentences which are grammatically correct.
I can tell when an argument is logically consistent too, so that probably even gives me a slight advantage in this case...
pakeha
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Here's a quick summary of Bolland's thoughts on early Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Bolland
Sound familiar?
Here's more on Bolland, taken from RatSkep
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dejudge said:
In which language can you construct grammatically correct sentences?
Brainache said:
Your argument for Jesus the Rabbi is NOT logically consistent.
You use Galatians 1.19 as historical when it is about the Lord Jesus, the Lord from heaven, God Creator, and God's Own Son who was raised from the dead.
I am afraid that you really cannot tell when an argument is logically consistent because you call Paul a Liar and still accept Galatians 1.19 at face value.
Plus, Jesus called Rabbi was the Logos and God Creator in gJohn.
There is virtually no logical consistency in your un-evidence proposal.
Well I agree with you - there is a significant difference between what the gospels claim and what "Paul" claims.
That's why I made that distinction in reply to David Mo, and it's a distinction I have emphasised here several times before. Namely - as claimed "evidence" of Jesus, Paul's letters are in a slightly different category to the anonymously written gospels with all their numerous impossible miracles stories.
Why bother with this nonsense?
There is much logic used in analysing the contents of the letters of Paul to glean information from them, rather than just accepting them all, or rejecting them all. You should try it some day.
Your reference to gJohn is bafflingly irrelevant.
Impossibility of miracles have no effect on the Pauline lies.
A Pauline writer conceded that he should be called a False Witness if the dead rise NOT.
1 Corinthians 15:15 KJV---Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up , if so be that the dead rise not.
The Dead rise NOT.
I am obligated to call Paul a Liar.
We know exactly why the Pauline Corpus was fabricated. It was to claim that Paul was a Witness that God raised Jesus, his Son, from the dead on the THIRD day and was a witness to his disciples when NO such thing ever happened.
The Pauline writings were known to be a compilation of Lies since at least the 4th century.
The Pauline Corpus is in a far worse position than the Gospels?
Maybe so, but the canonical gospels are similarly steeped in contradictions. It seems sheer folly to imagine, in lieu of the fraud apparent throughout the centuries of Christian writings, that these are somehow more historically reliable.
These writings, originally mostly Jewish in origin where the Gospels are concerned, were never meant to be understood as ‘history’ to begin with. They were mostly a collection of narratives or teachings reiterating in recast form the collective remembered history of the Jewish people - midrash in other words. By the time we get well into the second century though, the gentiles had become the dominant group, and, mostly ignorant of Jewish culture, proceeded to impose a distorted literalness on the gospel texts that never originally intended.
It’s true that Paul’s writings, recovered by Marcion and first used against what became the orthodoxy, was only belatedly adopted, and without any perceivable interaction with the canonical gospels. I don’t think it’s true to say that they didn’t play any subsequent role in the development of the Jesus story though, or Christianity in general. Without Paul’s contribution, the cupboard would have remained pretty bare!
Neither is it correct to say that Matthew contains ‘virtually 100 %’ of the Gospel of Mark. Of the thirty odd manuscripts embodied within Luke, the first eight are missing in Mark (as they were in Marcion’s Gospel), and of the other 25 found in Luke, 10 are omitted altogether, whereas 8 are incorporated in their entirety. Matthew, again, demonstrates a common use of manuscripts with the others, yet not as great as between the compilers of Luke and Mark.
There’s little evidence to suggest that Mark, as partly based on the Gospel of Peter (which already included the Sayings of Christ), was used in the early development of the Jesus tale. Tertullian never mentions the Gospel of Mark at all, and its general influence right up to the end of the second century is so scant that it might as well not have existed at all!
Also, the four Gospels didn’t gain any real traction till toward the end of the second century, with that century’s most influential gospels that of Hebrews and Peter, with Egyptians in distant third place. These three could be said to be the fountainhead from which all the others flowed.
Paul’s writings were hardly intended to fabricate Peter, James etc. By being recovered by Marcion, they seem to have crossed over from the first century into the middle of the second century. Acts of the Apostles strives to ‘harmonize’ Paul’s portrayals with those of the canonical gospels, and ‘Paul’ with ‘Peter’, as well as handing primacy to the Church of Rome. Matthew is partly theological and also partly directed toward the same end (connecting Peter with the foundation of the Church – the narrative of the conversation between Jesus and Peter, as given in Luke and Mark, contains nothing of the kind.)
Bolland seems to have been a poor selection on my part, pakeha ... Perfection is hard to come by?
By the way, pakeha, I've been trying to establish the first Christian reference to John the Baptist. The first I can find is by Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho).
Being the first and a pretty key character in the Jesus tale, do you know of any earlier citation?
Being the first and a pretty key character in the Jesus tale, do you know of any earlier citation?
Belz...
Fiend God
It'd be really nice if you could demonstrate how it's not consistent when you say things like that.
pakeha
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Dunno.
I quite enjoyed reading up on Bollard.
Perfection is for coffee, not forum posters.
As far as I can see I'm the least knowledgeable poster in this thread, DougW and I can't help you there.
I'm out the door for what promises to a fascinating work session and will Google the subject when I return home.
I'm quite sure other posters here can help you with pinning down the first Christian reference to JtB.
I never claimed the canonical gospels are historically reliable. They are Myth Fables that were believed in antiquity by people call Christians.
On the other hand, the Entire Pauline Corpus is a compilation of Lies and was NEVER known by the early Jesus cult.
A Pauline writer claimed he met the Apostles Peter and James and even stayed with Peter for 15 days in Jerusalem when such a thing never happened.
The Apostles Peter and James are FICTION characters in the Myth Fables called Gospels.
The Pauline Corpus is historically and theologically bogus and do NOT represent the history of Jesus cult.
The Pauline writers used gLuke sometime in the 2nd century or later.
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proudfootz
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I'm curious at which date these gospels actually emerged - as far as I was aware sure dates have not yet been established.
A related question: what dates do you think Doherty or Carrier suggest for these texts?
proudfootz
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Well stated - even the title 'rabbi' is a notorious anachronism.
Sherira's statement shows clearly that at the time of Jesus there were no titles; and Grätz ("Gesch." iv. 431), therefore, regards as anachronisms the title "Rabbi" as given in the gospels to John the Baptist and Jesus...
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12494-rabbi
Paul's Jesus has nothing in common with the 'historic Jesus' under discussion.
The Pauline Jesus is completely fictional who never had any real existence.
proudfootz
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I haven't found the first reference to John the Baptist (unless it is in Josephus) but there does appear to be a gnostic sect for whom John is deemed to be a key figure (as opposed to the Jesus figure).
Interestingly, they are dated to the 1st century AD, their scriptures are in a form of Aramaic - the language of the area of Judea, and they seem to be consistent with the syncretism of mystery religions of the time and place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism
The use of the word "Rabbi" in gMatthew and gJohn is another clue that those versions of the stories of Jesus were most likely composed in the 2nd century or later.
In writings attributed to 1st century Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus there is NO mention of Jews with the title of Rabbi.
The evidence adds up.
2nd century writings mention stories of Jesus similar to gMatthew and gJohn as found in the writings of Justin Martyr and all manuscripts of the Jesus stories that have been recovered and dated are from the 2nd century or later.
Belz...
Fiend God
Well that's it, then !
Well we can take a stab at dating the Gospels.
Against Heresies dates to c180 CE and extensively quotes from what appears to be our gospels so this give us our upper limit.
From what we can determine Marcion put out what was the first Chrestian Bible c140 with the Evangelikon Gospel, which his detractors claimed was "Luke" so that pushes things back to at least that far back.
In the 130s we have Church father using one line references to what are supposedly our Gospels but before that nothing.
If the four Gospels did exist before the 130s nobody seems to know enough to even quote a sentence from them; a curious state of affairs if one takes the idea that Mark got written down 70-85 CE seriously.
Sure we get a host of handwaving to explain this but at the end of the day the fact is there is no evidence for our Gospels before c130 CE.
JaysonR
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By classifying one group, by class, as less rigorous than another, by class, is dismissive.
Being dismissive doesn't mean that something isn't considered at all; it means that one group is dismissed as equal to the other.
There are valid reasons to be dismissive; such as lacking information that became available later.
Then there are invalid reasons for being dismissive; such as claiming that one social class is less rigorous than another.
The date is only when a social class change occurred; the reason for the rigor-increase, according to Carrier, is that a lower social class came into the profession and that lower social class was better at scientific rigor than the upper class which, according to Carrier, contained traditions and sensibilities which were less critical than the new group of lower social class academics arriving into the field.
The chronology was not the reason given:
"(vii) I might add to his postscript on how history changed around 1960 (p. 294): due to the G.I. Bill and other changing resources and sensibilities, by that year hundreds of new scholars had entered all fields, including history and biblical studies, from the middle and lower classes, for the first time flooding academia with men who did not have the traditional elite education and sensibilities. The result was a great rise of interest in social history, against the mainstays of intellectual, political, and military history, and a shakeup of historical assumptions and methods toward a more critical and scientifically rigorous model. Both changes so radically altered our base of evidence and our understanding of antiquity, that earlier work *(which was from the elite listed above), even by great scholars, should always be held in some suspicion as less rigorous*(than the work following, created by the above listed lower and middle class academic flood) and less informed than work done since. "
* = my addition for clarification.
Sorry for the confusion.
"Dismissive" does not apply to not reading; it applies to the isolation of the social class "elite" by default.
By default, with no real good reason, the work previously done by the "elite" should inherently "always be held in some suspicion as less rigorous".
The new group of lower and middle social class rooted academics are given a full grace of not inherently being "always...held in some suspicion as less rigorous".
He attributes this to the previous "elite" as having "traditions and sensibilities" which were "less rigorous" and "critical" than the new lower and middle class demographic wave.
Not at all; that is exactly the words he outlined and exactly the two groups he outlines.
If I drew a Venn Diagram, I would have two groups for his description:
A) prior elite class academics
B) later lower and middle class academics
That's the two groups Carrier provides us, and those are the two groups Carrier outlines the characteristics of.
It would be entirely different if Carrier just wrote:
(vii) I might add to his postscript on how history changed around 1960 (p. 294): Our base of evidence and our understanding of antiquity was radically shaken, and as such, earlier work, even by great scholars, should always be held in some suspicion as less rigorous and less informed than work done since.
This would be a citation of simply information change over time; which occurs naturally and not because, as Carrier cites, "middle and lower classes, for the first time flooding academia with men who did not have the traditional elite education and sensibilities".
That is an entirely different statement.
No mojo required; he wrote the words quite clearly and provided us with his view of what caused the change - in his view, the reason was that the lower and middle class demographic newly flooding academic did not have the traditional elite education and sensibilities, and as a result, a great rise of interest in social history, against the mainstays of intellectual, political, and military history, and a shakeup of historical assumptions and methods toward a more critical and scientifically rigorous model. Both changes so radically altered our base of evidence and our understanding of antiquity, that earlier work, even by great scholars, should always be held in some suspicion as less rigorous and less informed than work done since.
It is dismissive to claim that one demographic of "elite" requires inherent suspicion, while another demographic of "middle and lower" classes requires no such inherent suspicion because that "middle and lower" demographic is described as being "more critical and scientifically rigorous".
'Wipes them out' refers to how only that "elite" group's work is inherently required to have suspicion, while at the same time the "middle and lower" group is inherently granted as "more critical" and not requiring "suspicion" inherently.
In this, we do not have Carrier stating that better information became available from archaeological and paleographic advances (which actually did happen around this time) which better informed the subject of inquiry.
No; we have Carrier stating that the cause of the change was a social betterment of the "middle and lower" classes at being more critical and scientifically rigorous; compared against the previous "elite" who were less critical and less rigorous.
My contention revolves around this problem of social classification entering into the reasoning as the reason provided for the change ("The result").
According to Carrier's note, the newly arriving middle and lower demographics were inherently more critical and more scientifically rigorous than the prior elite demographic.
We were not given a reason that the greater influx of individuals entering into the field were able to take advantage of better education and new information that was not previously available in the academic circle previously and as a result were able to form more critical and more scientifically rigorous models.
No; we are told, rather simply, that the middle and lower demographic was just more critical and more rigorous - that's it.
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